Can Schools Use Big Data To Recruit New Students?

Colleges are constantly competing to acquire more student than their rival schools. In today’s world how do colleges do this? Colleges obviously select their classes based off of the most accomplished students, but how do they gain the interests of these students in the first place? Big Data has become an extremely useful tool in the college recruiting process.

Colleges rely on big data not only in recruiting athletes for scholarships to better their sports teams and in return receive more publicity and popularity, but also in finding responsible young adults with the best potential to succeed. There have been reports about colleges stalking the social media sites of prospective students to determine which students are most likely to make it to graduation and which students are predicted to drop out.

Online schools most commonly use big data in recruiting as they rely on knowing who to reach out to over the internet. Considering online colleges are best for people who have easy access to a computer and to the internet, they target people who may be searching for “online masters degrees” or “programs with flexible schedules”. Once the college has determined who these people are, schools infiltrate these people’s daily lives by popping up in advertisements during their Pandora profile or on the borders of their social media profiles.

Big data is heavily utilized in the recruiting of prospective students and is becoming a main tool in determining acceptance. To learn more about how big data is being used in the recruiting world check out this interesting article about how big data is becoming the best resource for HR departments.